Our fifth day at sea after leaving Tenerife started with another promising day of early morning sunshine. Sadly, another day where I failed to see any Cetaceans. However, the Mirrorwing Flying Fish and Small Clearwings were still being regularly seen throughout the day.
We were also regularly encountering Sargassum Weed. There were many large patches of Sargassum Weed that had broken off from the main Sargassum Weed belt in the Sargasso Sea. This Sargassum Weed moves in a clockwise rotation around the centre of the Sargasso Sea. The Sargasso Sea is approximately two thousand by seven hundred miles in size and occurred to the North of our route. Sargassum Weed is an brown macroalgae. It forms vast rafts in the Sargasso Sea and it provides an important breeding ground for many Fish and other marine species.
Occasionally, when I've seen large numbers of Flying Fish, I see a Smurf or two. Smurfs are the name given to the youngest of Flying Fish. Typically, they are only a couple of inches in length and when you see them leap out of the water, they only manage about a few feet before they drop back into the water. To the naked eye, they appear to be round. Due to their limited flying range, they are just about impossible to photograph. They have dropped back into the water, before I even get the chance to lift the camera. However, I was lucky enough to be trying to photograph an adult Flying Fish, when I saw a Smurf appear.
It had been a long day with no Cetaceans. Jan decided to pack up the surveying just before sunset, to allow Terry to start working on the daily slide. There was only a few minutes before the sunset, so I decided to stay up on deck as I cannot resist an atmospheric sunset. On this occasion, the sun dropped behind the cloud on the horizon.
But suddenly, the sun reappeared through a gap in the cloud on the horizon. I was intrigued as I hadn't seen that before. I carried on watching the sun with the bins right on last light, when magically the yellow-orange sunlight changed to lime green. This was the mythical Green Flash that I had looked for on many occasions, but I hadn't seen. It lasted about fifteen seconds. I was worried I wouldn't have the time to raise the camera in time to get a photo, so, I just enjoyed it. I had always wondered why it was green. I was expecting that it should be a violet-blue colour, if it was down to light being refracted into different colours by the earth's surface. When I googled the Green Flash phenomenon that evening, I saw this was confirmed. However, these violet-blue frequencies tend to be quickly absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere and the frequencies that aren't absorbed produce the lime-green colouration. Perhaps the low cloud helped to reflect the lime-green colouration or maybe it is provides a darker background which makes the green colouration stand out better.
It had been a good day. I had photographed my first nigh on impossible to photograph Smurf and seen this mythical phenomenon.